Battle of the Binaries

When I was young, in the same way that I wondered why twins couldn't be given the same name, I wondered why stories always had to have conflicts.  Now, of course, I understand that the conflict is what makes the story, what gives it substance and meaning in actual life.  Through conflicts and varying degrees of resolution, a story can make a point about life as we know it.  The most meaningful stories, if not all stories, have conflict based around a binary.  What often differentiates one book from another is its approach to a certain binary.

The difficulty comes in the most masterful stories - those that address numerous binaries.  People naturally wish to categorize and simplify everything, and that includes binaries.  Binaries involving binaries.  This conundrum could be described (at the unfortunate loss of being cliched) as binary-ception.  Which binaries are at the forefront of our attention, somehow garnering more attention and perceived value than other less dominant binaries?  When you think of Light in August do you immediately jump to the huge role of racial conflict and sometimes skip over the ginormous role of, for example, gender or family?  (Perhaps here we can demonstrate these binaries with a new level of punctuation: bold typeface).  I think that for me personally, I sometimes fall into the WHITE/black//MALE/female binary.  And in between those, I easily forget about the FATHER/son binary.  What's more, I'm almost positive that there are other binaries that I don't even remember well enough to realize that I'm forgetting them!

So how am I, a very simple human still given to many of my natural, faulty predispositions, supposed to choose which binary to talk about when Faulkner so beautifully addresses multiple?  Just as in the case of individual binaries themselves, awareness of our own failings and striving to overcome is the first (and at times only available) step.  The injustice of certain binaries resonates with each of us differently, and that's okay.  We just have to remember that there are always other binaries to recognize and discuss, and sometimes it's a good idea to step back from our usual focus and look at those too.